by Greg Dillard

It was one hell of a debut. The XFL finally arrived after much hype, criticism, and cynicism throughout the sports and entertainment world. It was one hell of a debut indeed. Doubling NBC's normal Saturday Night Rating, delivering much higher ratings than anyone had guessed, and delivering a fairly professional product - The XFL has taken step number one in establishing themselves as a legitimate sports entity.

Can they continue this success? Can the XFL draw a 10 rating week in and week out? Can they continue to put gimmicky broadcasts together with college level competition and score a ratings touchdown? It's quite possible, critics be damned. The most important step the XFL must make, they've already made. They took their debut broadcast and learned from it. Learning from it is the key factor that's going to allow them to maintain that success, and then build on it in the future.

The first weekend of the XFL gave us the dizzying "string" camera angle that was reminiscent of playing a video game, close ups of cheerleaders doing next to nothing, pathetic WCW-ish backstage vignettes, and extremely long introductions with players giving shout outs to the guys on the road crew that they left behind before getting this new gig The key thing, however, is that they gave us all this stuff in the very first broadcast game, but by game 2 - broadcast on UPN - they already toned the majority of those things down. The "string cam" was used sporadically, the cheerleaders were more active, and less emphasis was put on the gimmicky backstage stunts. Those may be small things, but those are the kinds of things that Joe Sports Fan is going to notice.

That's the difference between the XFL and the NFL. The NFL has the "A" talent, and they always will. With talent like Donovan McNabb, Terrell Owens, Randy Moss, Corey Dillon, and many others the NFL will always draw. They simply have guys that can do things on a football field that no one else on earth can do. With that kind of talent you can afford to have hacks like Beasley Reese and Steve Tasker on the microphones. The XFL though? Everything is going to have to be better than the NFL in terms of production. Everything will have to be cutting edge but lacking in chintz. Everything will need to be as professionally done as possible while still revealing never before things to its fans if they want to keep their audience, let alone grow. That's not an easy package to deliver, but it's going to be a MUST for the XFL to succeed.

I think they can do it. It won't be easy. It might be impossible, but I think they can do it. The audience and the demand is there, that much is already evident. Whether it be a morbid curiosity or just Saturday night boredom this league was able to capture a large market audience on it's first night out of the chute. Everything else from here out will depend on exactly how Vince McMahon listens to his audience. Luckily this is one of the strengths McMahon has exhibited in his WWF tenure. He's definitely going to need it. That one strength is going to be necessary to hide the mediocre talents on the field. A bush league production job will remind the television and arena fans that they are simply watching a stateside version of the CFL.

Don't get me wrong...I enjoyed the action I saw on television. Guys like Vaughn Dunbar who starred for the San Francisco Demons were great talents coming out of college. They still have a little something in the tank, and I really dig the notion that these guys are busting their asses to win - in order to take home a little more green. I really like that concept, but let's not kid ourselves here XFL players like Tommy Maddox aren't going to be in the NFL pro-bowl any time soon. Can a diamond in the rough actually come out of the XFL? Sure....but it's not likely. Kurt Warner is the inspiration for every single guy in this league. Warner went from the Arena League to the Super Bowl in one season and that will make every XFL guy dreaming of NFL greatness bust his ass on our televisions each week. The effort just might up the level of competition enough to keep people's attention. Everything else though will rest on the packaging.

That's a slippery slope and a delicate balance that McMahon must keep. How do you keep things traditional enough for the die hard fan, and cutting edge enough for the alternative fan? How do you keep things new and different, and also keep things from becoming too gimmicky? That's a tough answer for the XFL to answer, but it's an answer that they must answer in order to make this work. Can Vince McMahon do it? This is a guy that thrives on proving the suits wrong. This is a guy that would love to take the arrogance already shown by the mainstream media like ESPN and shove it straight back in their faces. This is a guy that you count on to trumpet each and every XFL success as loudly as he can. This is a guy that takes "no" and never accepts it for an answer. This is a guy that stares down 350 pound pumped up bohemoths on a daily basis. Vince truly does have balls the size of grapefruits....and for the XFL to succeed he's going to need it.

I for one will be watching to see if he can do it.